> Shiji (Mandarin: zhǐshì) characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from

> Shiji (Mandarin: zhǐshì) characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept such as 上 "up" or "above" and 下 "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters. EDIT: It seems to me that you're arguing that Han are not ideographs, but here's a definition of the word from wikipedia: > An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek ἰδέα idéa "idea" and γράφω gráphō "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms. Now, Han are independent of language, being used to write multiple rather different languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Japanese), and they do represent ideas or concepts. They do also get used for only the sounds of the spoken words (in each language) for the same ideas/concepts, in which case they may mean very different words altogether. And they get used in combinations that aren't ideographic themselves, but none of that makes Han not-ideographic in origin and character.